The nominees for this year’s Golden Globes were announced yesterday and Sia earned some recognition for her directorial debut, Music. The film previously faced backlash for its portrayal of autism, and in light of the movie’s nominations, that feedback resurfaced, which prompted Sia to share an apology.
Last night, Sia wrote in a pair of tweets that are no longer available (according to Variety), “I promise, have been listening. The motion picture MUSIC will, moving forward, have this warning at the head of the movie: MUSIC in no way condones or recommends the use of restraint on autistic people. There are autistic occupational therapists that specialize in sensory processing who can be consulted to explain safe ways to provide proprioceptive, deep-pressure feedback to help w meltdown safety.”
She then added, “I’m sorry,” and continued, “I plan to remove the restraint scenes from all future printings. I listened to the wrong people and that is my responsibility, my research was clearly not thorough enough, not wide enough.”
As Variety notes, the tweets were online for about an hour before Sia’s account was deactivated.
Sia previously defended the film, tweeting of her decision to cast Maddie Ziegler as an autistic character, “I’ve never referred to music as disabled. Special abilities is what I’ve always said, and casting someone at her level of functioning was cruel, not kind, so I made the executive decision that we would do our best to lovingly represent the community.”
